r in his mind or in his view of my
position, had taken place; and I was happy to find him once more able,
not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act
also fraternally. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully
unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to
establish bondage.

For the _peculiarities_ of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend
nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of
falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never
be destroyed, while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against
opinion. These are the outworks of the Romish citadel: until they are
razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack. If we are to blind
our eyes, in order to accept an article of King Edward VI., or an
argument of St. Paul's, why not blind them so far as to accept the
Council of Trent? If we are to pronounce that a man "without
doubt shall perish everlastingly," unless he believes the
self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should
we shrink from a similar anathema on those who reject the
self-contradictions of Transsubstantiation? If one man is cast out
of God's favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after
truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word
of a Church, of a Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search for truth
is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly
into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and
unconvincedly submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of
Romanism: its legitimate development makes us Pagans outright.

* * * * *

But in what position was I now, towards the apostles? Could I
admit their inspiration, when I no longer thought them infallible?
Undoubtedly. What could be clearer on every hypothesis, than that they
were inspired on and after the day of Pentecost, and _yet_ remained
ignorant and liable to mistake about the relation of the Gentiles to
the Jews? The moderns have introduced into the idea of inspiration
that of infallibility, to which either _omniscience_ or _dictation_
is essential. That there was no dictation, (said I,) is proved by
the variety of style in the Scriptural writers; that they were not
omniscient, is manifest. In truth, if human minds had not been left
to them, how could they have argued persuasively? was not the superior
success of their p